Shabbos preparations

Mother in Israel posted about Shabbos preparations and wanted to know how others manage to pull it all together on these early shabbosim. Although MiI likes to prepare everything on Friday so that it'll be fresh as possible, I don't. I need to plan in advance and I often start cooking early. When I'm disorganized we have a really quick and easy Shabbos consisting of one or two dishes. I only have three kids one of which only nurses. So when I don't plan we end up eating a rice and chicken type dish. I have two recipes. The one we like more is to put rice in an aluminum pan. Then you put the chicken on top. You sprinkle on paprika, pepper, garlic powder. Mix less than one Tbsp. of ketchup per piece of chicken, 1 Tbsp. of brown sugar per piece of chicken, and soy sauce. Pour over chicken. Add water (2 cups water per 1 cup rice). Cover and bake until water is absorbed and rice looks ready. You can always add soy sauce and more brown sugar along with water to cook it longer if it isn't ready. The other variation is to place the sauce in the aluminum pan. Place the chicken on top. Sprinkle with spices (salt, pepper, garlic powder, paprika). Add a small can of mushrooms and some onion soup mix. Add water. Bake covered. Both of these are easy and quick ways to make a meal. We also buy jarred gefilte fish and make a veggie salad. We try to skip dessert in order to cut back on calories. This is all when it's just us.

When I'm in the mood for something fancier and more thought out I make any of the following side dishes: carrot kugel, potato kugel, cranberry crisp, sweet potato pie. The main dish is usually some form of chicken-breaded baked chicken (1/2 cup mayo, paprika, garlic powder, salt, pepper. mix and dip in bread crumbs), chicken with bar-b-que sauce, chicken with honey mustard sauce, chicken with apricot sauce-hubby doesn't like this so much so we haven't had it in a while, chicken with potatoes, fried shnitzel. Then occassionally I make deli roll-take filo dough, roll it out and cut in half so you have two rectangular pieces, smear with ketchup and mustard, place two types of deli on top, roll it, bake. And of course, what Shabbos meal would be incomplete without chullent. So basically when we feel like putting more time and effort into shabbos, we make two of the above side dishes, one form of chicken and if we're having guests we make deli roll and/or chullent. If we have guests I usually make a chocolate cake from a mix to save time and because it comes out so good. To enhance the taste I add chocolate chips to the chocolate cake mix. It comes out really yummy. Oh and I forgot so say that when we have guests I make gefilte fish from a loaf and maybe also soup.

So I start off making my list of what we will want to eat for Shabbos. Then I make a shopping list. I make sure that I have everything on Tuesday night or Wednesday morning. I start with the kugels on Wed. If I'm really good I get two done and maybe also the cake. On Thursday I coook the fish and soup. If I'm really good I also get the chicken dish done. On Friday hopefully all I have left is the chullent. That leaves me with the cleaning to do and at that point my hubby is home to help so we get it done on time.

Also, I've devised a rotation of what cleaning will be done on what day to make my life easier. I don't always stick to it and don't always get it done but here goes. On Sunday I clean the master bedroom and bathroom. On Monday, I should clean the kids room. Tuesday I clean the kids bathroom and storage room. Wednesday I clean the toy room -I've been avoiding that one for a while (yup, it looks like a tornado hit it). On Thursday I clean the office and study which are downstairs. On Friday I clean the kitchen and living room and the bathroom downstairs. Sounds great doesn't it. Now if only I'd stick to it maybe my house would look more decent. If I don't do all that, we at least try to clean the kitchen and living room for Shabbos. This allows us to feel ready to greet the Shabbos queen.

Shabbos guests

This week I decided to try to be extra good about keeping the house clean. I tried to tidy up every night after everyone went to sleep. That meant I got less sleep this week. We've had these icky small fly things in our house and they're always flying in the kitchen. That was part of the reason I was trying to be so clean this week. I didn't want their number to increase. They multipy like rabbits.

Anyway, so I was keeping the house so nice and clean. Then a friend asked us if we could host a couple for sleeping and a meal on Shabbos. I thought about it. First I responded that having them sleep here shouldn't be such a big deal. We would just have to clean up the office/guest room a bit. I told my friend to try to find them meals elsewhere but when she was unsuccessful, we decided to have them here for lunch.

So on Wednesday I started cooking for Shabbos. I made cranberry crisp which I had been craving ever since I gave birth and the neighbor made us a very yummy one. On Thursday I got a recipe from a different neighbor for her potato kugel which we got to taste after I gave birth as well. My husband really liked the consistancy of this kugel. I made potato kugel and sweet potato pie as well as chocholate cake and shnitzel on Thursday. That was definately a record for amount of food cooked in one day since I gave birth (and probably even before-like since I was in my 8th month or so). On Friday I made chullent.

The cute young couple arrived Friday afternoon. The wife had a bad cold and slept a lot. The husband it turns out is the brother in law of a girl I know from seminary. They were very nice. They ate out Friday night at a different family. Shabbos day they ate here. My son kept asking me why the wife was always sleeping. We played some Jewish geography, which is always lots of fun. For shalosh seudos they ate at our neighbors next door. I think they had a nice time and got to see the yishuv. Since they have no kids I don't understand why they would move out of Jlm but they are from Chicago and don't like the city so much. Although they said that they think they'll be seeing us around the yishuv again I wouldn't be surprised if they wouldn't. Usually young couples prefer to live in the city where there are many more conveniences. You don't move to a yishuv only for the grass and the wide open spaces.

So I was impressed with my ability to pull that off. I remember after my first son was born. I stayed with my mom for the first month. I didn't feel like I had recuperated from the birth until 6 weeks afterwards. I didn't get the nursing going well until 2 months. This time, I didn't tear which meant no stiches and less pain and being able to sit. I already had tons of practice nursing. I already mastered nursing while being covered up. I was worried about the baby wanting to nurse during the meal but that wasn't a problem because he ate right before and slept the whole time. When my son was an infant I used to go into the bedroom and close the door while I nursed and my hubby entertained the guests. I guess things have gotten a lot easier. So, all in all, having guests wasn't so bad after all.

Progress Report

Although I had been doing really well, yesterday I slipped up again. I started being really stressed out and took out all the negative energy on my poor kids. Being home all day is not easy. Talmud Torah didn't split the afternoon up enough. Today I was better but still not great.

My daughter has had diarhea for a few days now. She also caught a cough from the girls in her playgroup. At 4:30 she said her stomach hurt and curled up in her stroller for a nap. When she woke up I saw she had a fever and after seeing it was 100.9 under the arm, I gave her akamoli. It took a while for it to work and she was in a lot of pain. Once it kicked in she was back to her energetic self although a bit tamer. Luckily she went to sleep and in fact all the kids are asleep. My husband is urging me to go to sleep as well.

He wa so helpful tonight. He stopped off on the way home to buy a new Imim L'binah calendar and also bought some kugels for shabbos. I told him how much I appreciated that and how it lifted off the burden of having to make side dishes. I feel like all the pressure of preparing for shabbos is gone. Tomorrow, we'll have to take my daughter to the doc, cook the chicken, and clean. It should be interesting. We'll see how much I get done with baby in one hand and sick toddler kvetching all day.